I was digging around on the web looking for some information and wound up on PetaPixel, where I ran into this article.

It seems photographer and film maker Kevin Collins posted some of his images on his webpage and allowed their use by others under the Creative Commons License. The story goes that another artist took the image and manipulated it in Photoshop and then submitted that image in a contest, which he won. The prize was a Macbook Pro and the contest was run by the ad agency for Mini-Cooper. After reading the article, viewing the images and reviewing the Creative Commons license, I've come to the conclusion that Mr. Collins is the victim of copyright infringement.

I know that I sometimes get my back up over things that are not very important though so I thought I'd see what some of our fellow photographers had to say. What do you think about this situation? Should the original photographer pursue it with the ad agency?

lara_ckl wrote:
Don't think a contest organizer should (or could) be the arbiter of what is, or is not, a copyright violation.

Well, in this case, they have asked for "original work" as per this line from the contest rules: "Your submission must be 100% original work.” Further, Kevin Collins, in his Creative Commons license of the image, required that use of the image required attribution. In other words, the original creator of the photograph had to be credited with it's creation.

Leaving those considerations out, is the submitted image different enough from the original that it's has become an original work of it's own?

binary visions wrote:
Isn't a manipulation of someone else's work, by definition, not an original work?
Indeed, it is by definition NOT original.

binary visions wrote:
I'd also suggest that it's nowhere near different even if the argument was made that a manipulation could be considered entirely original.

Agreed. Even if we grant that it is allowable to start with someone else's work, the changes made do not substantially differ from the original image enough that it would be considered "new" work, in my opinion.